Teachers’ and school leaders’ unions have called on the chancellor to increase school funding by £1.7 billion next year in his Autumn Statement to stop further cuts to provision.
The NEU and NASUWT teaching unions, the Association of School and College Leaders (ASCL) and the NAHT school leaders’ union have written a joint letter to Jeremy Hunt today to urge him to prioritise education in his budget statement on 22 November.
General secretaries Daniel Kebede, of the NEU; Geoff Barton, of the ASCL; Paul Whiteman, of the NAHT; and Patrick Roach, of the NASUWT, say they expect schools’ costs to rise by at least 5.8 per cent in 2024-25 if there is a pay award equivalent to that awarded in 2023-24.
“This overall increase in schools’ costs will require an increase in school funding of at least £1.7 billion in 2024-25 in order to recruit and retain teachers and protect schools and colleges from having to make further cuts in provision,” union leaders add.
“We are deeply concerned that following the correction of an accounting error, mainstream schools’ funding via the National Funding Formula will only rise by an average 1.9 per cent per pupil next year. This is well below the current rate of inflation and will place even greater pressure on already overstretched school budgets,” the letter says.
School funding plea
Leaders say that as it stands, schools will only be able to afford a staff pay rise of 1 per cent in September 2024.
Unions welcomed the decision to increase the national minimum wage in April 2024, but said schools would need an increase in funding to be able to afford this.
As the letter highlights, the School Teachers’ Review Body, which makes recommendations on teacher pay, said in its 33rd report: “Investment is needed to proactively manage the worsening recruitment position and declining competitiveness of teacher pay. It will be more cost-effective to act sooner rather than later. The cost of failure is high: it affects teaching quality and adversely impacts on children’s education.”
In a recent survey of NEU teacher members, 92 per cent of respondents, out of nearly 4,000, said their school did not have enough funding to hire all the teachers it needed. Some 85 per cent also said their school did not have enough funding to provide appropriate learning resources for pupils.
The government announced an extra £40 million hardship fund for struggling schools earlier this year, including £20 million for local authorities with the highest maintained school deficits and £20 million for academies in deficit.
Sector leaders told Tes the money would not be enough and felt like “a sticking-plaster solution”.
A DfE spokesperson said: “School funding is rising by over £3.9 billion this year compared to 2022-23, reaching the highest level in history, in real terms per pupil, by 2024-25.
“That includes an additional £2 billion for both this year and next, announced at the last Autumn Statement, recognising the higher costs schools are facing and matching both inflation and what the unions told us was needed.
“It also includes a further £525 million in 2023-24 and £900 million in 2024-25, announced over the summer, to support with the teachers’ pay award and for schools who may still need extra support, we are providing up to £40 million additional funding in 2023-24 for schools in financial difficulty.”
